


breathe in to the count of five

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, Extra Treat, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost(s), Masturbation, Minor Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Minor Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo, Object Insertion, Prison, Sexual Frustration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22623067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Prison life is boring. But thanks to the Force, Ben is never alone.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 72
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	breathe in to the count of five

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



Life on remand has a familiar military rhythm. Each day starts early with the blare of an alarm, followed by meals and roll calls at regimented intervals with lots of idle waiting in between. Guards patrol the cell blocks, snatching contraband and quelling fights or pretending that’s what they’re doing while they throw their weight around for fun. The main change from the life Ben’s used to is that now he's on the wrong side of the truncheons. He can’t beat up prisoners who annoy him, or leave to find more interesting activities.

Well, he _can._ He just doesn’t. Ben has counted twenty-three ways he could escape this place if he wanted to, and only nineteen of them involve definite or probable casualties. In the wake of war, the kneecapped interim government has barely enough resources to house its captives, let alone stage the war crime trials that must eventually form part of the galaxy’s healing process. Tens of thousands of ex-First Order personnel have been distributed for the meantime in whatever civilian prisons have space for them. It would be easy to take advantage of the chaos. Fight or Force trick his way past security, steal a transport, head for the Outer Rim where he can lose himself in the crowds of war fugitives who weren’t polite enough to wait for justice.

He could leave today.

‘Stay calm,’ says the voice by his side. ‘Control the anger. Remember your breathing exercises.’

‘I am calm,’ he snarls at his mother’s ghost. ‘I’m just bored. What was the benefit to all this, again? The great peace you were fighting for? At least my regime had a functioning justice system.'

'Do you think you'd be happier in one of the First Order's penal work camps?’

Probably not. Hard to say. It’s been a long time since _happy_ has factored into Ben’s decision-making.

‘This is how repentance works. You don’t do it because it’s easy, or because someone else makes you. You do it because you know it’s right and you want what’s best for the galaxy.’ Leia smiles. ‘And you’re doing well, Ben. I’m proud of you. We’re all proud of you.’

We. Three brave and stubborn members of Ben's bloodline who gave their lives so he could end up where he is today. Defeated, but alive. Imprisoned, but free of the voices and conflicts that have raged in his head since the day he was born. Now the three of them are at peace together in the glow of the eternal Force, watching his progress, guarding their triumph. Sometimes he thinks it would have been kinder to let him die too. But they don’t want him to join them yet. He has other work to do first. Internal work.

The galactic greater good can jump for all Ben cares. He has other reasons to keep going, and right now, what those reasons want is for him to stay in prison and do his damn breathing exercises.

* * *

He’d like to remodel himself as a grim, ascetic penitent. Renounce his worldly interests. Cloak himself in the roughspun garb of spiritual mourning. The trouble is that remand isn’t just boring – it’s _distractingly_ boring. Ben’s boredom is an active state that requires hours of restless daily attention. Even before his fall, his natural aptitude never lay in the realm of quiet contemplation. He likes to do things. Accomplish set tasks. Act out his thoughts in the physical world. His inability to do anything now is maddening.

He tries to meditate on the duality of light and dark, but gets sidetracked trying to guess what the kitchen might serve for dinner. For every hour of yard time they allow him, he spends several more planning his workout in detail. He thinks about sex a lot. Thinks about Rey, and imagines himself fucking her, pounding his frustration into her hot, slick cunt. He wonders if she’s fucking anyone else on the outside. Finn, maybe. The unremarkable trooper who in the interval since Ben last saw him has apparently transformed into Rey’s promising new Force-sensitive apprentice. He’d like to think it’s competitive jealousy that makes his cock harden at the thought, and a simple power fantasy that makes him weave Finn’s presence into the increasingly fevered scenes his stir-crazy imagination feeds him. The alternative is … complicated, and Ben already has a sufficiently large backlog of realisations about his true self to work through.

Rey thinks about him too, sometimes. He knows because he feels it through their bond, like a string tied around his balls that she can tug whenever she likes. 

It happens one time during roll call. He's standing at attention while the warden verifies that no dangers to peaceful society have escaped since the last check three hours ago. More wasted time. More boredom. Ben’s mind is already drifting places it shouldn’t, and when Rey appears in front of him – naked from the waist down, lying back, legs spread to expose herself – it’s almost enough to make him forget where he is.

‘Ben.’ Her eyes lock onto him, pupils wide, cheeks flushed. The Force has joined them while she’s in the middle of pleasuring herself. She’s rubbing her clit one-handed and using the other to fuck herself with a smooth silicon toy about the size of Ben’s cock.

No. A little smaller. It’s an adequate substitute for him, but he could do better, could bury himself in her cunt and lift her legs up over his shoulders and –

‘Solo! Are you present or not?’

The warden is glaring at him. A few other inmates are turning to stare. ‘Present, sir,’ he says, and sees comprehension dawn in Rey’s eyes. The connection fades, and the warden skilfully blunts the most urgent of Ben’s arousal by barking:

‘That’s a disciplinary mark. When I call your name, you answer promptly.’

Self-important fool. Ben could crush him with both hands behind his back. ‘Yes, sir.’

When roll call’s done, he claims a few moments of privacy by kicking two frightened ex-First Order officers and one very confused civilian crook out of the ‘fresher block. Behind the minimal cover of the half-height cubicle wall, he fucks his fist and comes wondering if Rey finished the job herself or if she enlisted other help in his absence.

* * *

His cellmates think he’s crazy. ‘Will you _please_ shove a cork in it?’ Brax snaps one day, interrupting Ben’s (politely low-volume) conversation with his uncle’s visiting ghost. ‘I swear, they should throw you and all your imaginary friends in ad seg. Give the rest of us some peace.’

‘If it’s bothering you,’ Ben offers, ‘I’d be happy to knock you out for a few hours. It’s easy not to mind other people’s business when you’re in a coma.’

‘Ben,’ says Uncle Luke reprovingly. ‘We’ve talked about this. Violence is a self-perpetuating cycle.’

‘Ignore him, man,’ Dansom urges Brax. ‘Didn’t you hear what he did to the Imps in Block Esk that time?’

Ben had nothing to do with the Block Esk bloodbath. He doesn’t know who spread the rumour of his involvement, but he hasn’t bothered correcting it, because anything that encourages his fellow inmates to give him space is fine. Fights aren’t uncommon in an enclosed space full of strong personalities, career thugs and angry former soldiers. Factions form. Tensions boil over. Small conflicts devolve into lethal grudges. There’s huge explosive power packed inside this blaster-barrel of a place, and Ben has years of command experience telling him exactly how to tame it to his advantage. He could build a faction of his own. Take control of his cell block and use his influence to keep the peace, scare the troublemakers straight.

His ghosts don’t approve. They tell him he can’t be trusted with power, and they’re probably right. So instead he lets himself get typecast as a dangerous headcase best left alone. The occasional insult from his cellmates is the biggest issue he ever has.

‘Cycles don’t break on their own,’ he tells Luke, as Dansom and Brax go back to muttering among themselves. He pitches his voice a little lower now, even though they don’t deserve the courtesy. ‘For as long as we’re all locked in here together, there’s always going to be violence, and there’s only so much the guards can do. Someone inside needs to step up and bring some order to this place.’

‘I think you’ve brought more than enough order in your life already. Take your own advice and stop minding other people’s business.’

‘Of course. Keep my head down. Do my breathing exercises, right?’

‘That’s the spirit.’

* * *

Rey visits him through the bond while he’s out on yard time, around halfway through his fifth muscle-up set on the support beam under the eastern guard tower. They don’t like it when he gets this close to the perimeter, although technically he’s still in bounds. The guards on watch will have at least one sharpshooter trained on him in case he breaks for the fence or starts uprooting pylons with his bare hands or whatever the fuck they're afraid he’s going to do.

‘Hi, Ben,’ Rey says, and he loses track of where he’s up to in the workout he spent all morning and most of yesterday planning. It doesn’t matter. She’s more important. ‘Are you alone this time?’

‘Sort of,’ he says, squinting up the guard tower. He’s pretty sure that glinting light is the scope of a sniper rifle pointed his way. ‘I have spectators.’

The frustration on Rey’s face echoes every self-pitying feeling his ghosts tell him he’s not supposed to indulge. She won’t say she misses him, and he won’t say he resents the well-earned incarceration that keeps him away from her. They have their bond. That’s more than most guys in this place can say about their lovers on the outside. The holodramas lied: conjugal visits aren’t a big part of prison life.

The irony is that they’d probably be enjoying more time together had Rey let Ben die on Exegol. He doesn’t know much about life as a Force ghost, and from what he’s seen of his parents and Luke, there are things he doesn’t want to know. Things no son wants to know about his parents and his uncle and their happy arrangement in the afterlife where human taboos apparently don’t matter any more. He doesn’t know and intends never to find out if ghosts have _those_ sorts of needs. But at least they don’t have prison wardens and irritable cellmates breathing down their necks every minute of every day.

He can feel Rey’s frustrated desire throbbing through the bond. Dropping from the bar and sitting down on the dusty grass underneath the pylon, he says, ‘You got yourself a toy. Are you enjoying it?’

Blood rises to her cheeks. ‘Ben, we can’t – not when other people are–’

‘They can’t see or hear you. Only I can. Tell me, Rey. I want to know that you’re getting what you need. Even if I can’t be the one to provide it for you.’

The words, in his head, sound noble and self-sacrificing. A shade heroic, even. But Rey’s lips twist somewhere between concern and amusement. ‘It’s a sex toy, Ben, not a replacement lover. You don’t need to be jealous of it.’

‘I’m not jealous, I’m just asking. Where did you get it? Did Finn give it to you?’

Rey frowns, and studies his face. Something must show. ‘At some point, we need to have a conversation about your fantasy life. I have some questions.’

‘Honestly, I think I do, too.’ He shrugs. Now’s not the time for complex discussions. There are exactly seventeen minutes left of yard time, and after that it’s back to lockdown. ‘Show me how you touch yourself. Please, Rey. I want to see. This is the most privacy I’ll have all day till lights out.’

He’s not pushing his luck too far, he doesn’t think. He can feel how much she wants it. Not as much as he does. There’s a depth of desperate wanting no one can really understand until they’re locked in a cage with no freedom of choice – but Rey’s as close to that depth as anyone on the outside can get. She won’t say she misses him. She’ll show him, instead.

Sitting on the grass in the far corner of the yard, with no privacy except for the curtain of hair around his face, Ben watches Rey fuck herself with a silicon rod that’s tantalisingly close to the size of his cock. She lies back, legs spread, and he wants to stare at all of her at once but he can’t take his eyes off the toy plunging in and out of her cunt. She’s wet, flushed red, clit swollen beneath her circling fingers, and he feeds like a starving parasite on the flow of her pleasure through the bond. The tight coil of her belly. The heat between her legs. He can feel it all, so close to real, so close that his cock is leaking precome and it takes all his self-control not to forget the guards and rut his own hand.

When she comes, he comes too. He can’t help it. He’s too wound up, too frustrated, too deprived of any kind of human touch or warmth, and he spurts inside his prison-issue jumpsuit and feels dizzy relief mixed with stickiness and shame. Who knows what his face looks like or what the guards make of his twitching body down the sights of their rifles.

But Rey’s gone all slack and happy from release, and when Ben has to march off back to his cell minutes later, he’s less irritated about it than usual.

* * *

‘I spent some time in the slammer myself, you know. Picked up a few tricks. Want me to teach you how to make your own grog?’

Ben’s eating uncooked packet noodles alone-ish on the edge of his cot. His cellmates are all crowded around the door with their backs to him, spying on the guard outside watching movies on his datapad. ‘Uh … no thanks, dad.’

‘Not a drinker these days? That’s okay. You can sell it for some extra commissary money, or give it away to your buddies.’

‘I don’t have buddies.’

‘You will have, if word gets around that you’re giving out grog.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he hears one of his cellmates tell the guard through the door. ‘Just Solo talking to himself again.’

Annoyance makes Ben’s voice rise. ‘Aren’t you going to lecture me about breathing exercises?’

Han smiles, all soft and wistful in his deceptively solid-looking face. He’s not real – he’s even less real than Ben’s translucent blue mother and uncle, who can draw on years of Force training to help them manifest as proper ghosts. His father is just … there, somehow. A glitch in the fabric of reality. 

Ben’s in no mood to turn down even the most imaginary of company. It’s not so different from his old life, here in prison. Surrounded by people all the time. Desperate for five minutes alone, and so isolated that he thinks he's going crazy.

‘Nah.’ Han sits down beside him. The mattress doesn’t dip, but Ben is too used to ghosts to find it uncanny. ‘I figure Luke and Leia are all over that. I’m just here to keep you company, kid. I know how lonely it gets in prison.’ He smiles again. ‘You’re doing great here. Never forget that. Never forget how proud we all are that you’ve managed to turn your life around.’

Something happens on the guard’s datapad screen that makes Ben’s cellmates whoop and holler. _Life_ isn’t the word he'd use for this existence. It’s hard to feel like he’s turning anything around when there’s barely room inside his cell to rotate on the spot.

He keeps it up anyway. Deep breaths in and out, and his dad stays there with him until he finishes his snack and falls asleep.


End file.
